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Ghana: Government-EU Negotiation On Timber Trade Ends
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Public Agenda (Accra)
16 May 2008
Posted to the web 16 May 2008
Ama Kudom-Agyemang
The on-going round of negotiations in Accra between the government of Ghana and the EU aimed at establishing a Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) on trade in timber will end by close of day today. The Ministry of Lands, Forestry and Mines is spearheading the negotiations on behalf of the government.
It is the third negotiation since the process begun in December 2006, upon the request of the Ghana government to the EU for such an agreement to be reached, in order to safeguard the country's timber trade with the EU. The first was held in Accra, Ghana in March 2007 and the second was held in Brussels, Belgium in June 2007.
The VPA will be an agreement to be contracted between the EU and timber - producing countries to prevent illegally produced timber from entering the EU markets. Ghana is hopefully going to be the first country to sign such an agreement.
At this round of negotiation being held behind closed doors the main agenda is a discussion of government of Ghana's position and recommendations on the four core elements of the VPA.
The four elements include the "Definition of legal timber in Ghana," which are supposed to be a set of standards derived from the existing Ghanaian forest laws and policies covering the source, allocation, harvesting, transportation, processing, trade and payment of timber; and "Legality Assurance System," which is a scheme to trace, identify and license timber as originating from a legal source for the EU market.
The others are "Timber Industry Restructuring," which borders on issues and measures that should to be considered to sustain the industry and what the "The Domestic Market Situation," is like. This has to do with the fact that even though the current focus of the VPA is on the export market, it is expected that the scheme being put in place should be applied to the domestic market in the medium to long term.
Ghana's position and recommendations were compiled into reports, prepared by technical groups that have been studying the elements and related issues over the past several months. The groups were set up by the VPA National Steering Committee to specifically deal with the core elements.
A source close to the negotiating partners hinted that the EU delegation would want to establish among other things the exact definition the government has given to "legal timber," and whether stakeholders such as civil society organisations and the private sector were consulted on the issues raised.
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The source indicated that the question of who does the licensing of legal timber is also being discussed. According to the source, the EU prefers that a body is set up to specifically handle licenses. It is yet unclear what the position of the government of Ghana is on that. Hopefully, this and other unclear issues would be resolved and clarified at the end of the negotiations, so that a mutually beneficial VPA would be reached between Ghana and the EU.
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